If you could press a button and....

[AdamWho]

All the X people would disappear, would you do it?


Possible examples:

If you could press a button and all the murders would disappear would you do it? (and would you be one of them)

Religious fanatics? Racists? People with their turn signal stuck on....

What is your favorite category of people (or animals) to genocide?

I am a big fan of "All Russians currently in Ukraine"

 

[Ford]

No.

For starters, I don't have a "favorite category of people to genocide." Wiping out an entire subset of the human population based on arbitrary definitions is...bad.

Let's say - for example - my genocide of choice was "homeless drug addicts." Seems easy...right?

Yet that would include this guy I worked with at the factory I was at during the latter part of 2020. Danny was homeless, and got that way - by his own admission - because he "destroyed my life with drugs and alcohol." He lived in the shelter not far from the factory, was working on his sobriety, and was hands-down the most positive homeless drug addict I'd ever met. Every time I saw him it was "how you doing, Danny?" "Living the dream, man!!!" He made me realize that my problems were small by comparison.

If I did the "Thanos snap" on all homeless drug addicts, he'd be included, and everyone like him who was trying to get their lives back together.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

Murderers is not a static category (nor are many of the others you mentioned). So if wipe out all current murderers, a new batch will crop up. Also what is a murderer? According to some it is anyone who has or performs an abortion. What about world leaders who are responsible for deaths of people? Official executioners working for the state?
As for Russians in Ukraine, I imagine many Ukrainians were originally immigrants from Russia.
Racists could include almost everyone in the world.
Religious fanatics? Some are harmless and others dangerous.

 

[Bronzeage]

The simplest philosophical propositions always break down on the definitions. "Murder" is an excellent example.

Humans are social creatures and we cannot survive alone. Every society since there has been such a thing has a basic tenet usually stated as "Thy shall not kill." What it really means is, "Thy shall not kill your friends." After all, we must sleep sometime and unless we feel safe, it's a very uneasy sleep.

We have to define friend. A person who kills a friend is a murderer, by definition. King David was celebrated for the number of men he killed. Of course, his victims weren't friends, fellow tribesmen, or any others included in the group. A killer and a murderer are not equivalents.

As to the original question, about evaporating murderers, what's the point. Is there any benefit? Causing a murderer to vanish doesn't resurrect the victims. Only a few murderers kill more than one person, so there are few future victims to spare. It certainly does nothing to prevent future murders.

The real proposition is not, "Would you?", but "Why would you?"

 

[Jarhyn]

Even if it was "everyone who would push this button against anyone who wouldn't push this button", this might end up killing 99.9% of the population, so probably not.

 

[AdamWho]

The simplest philosophical propositions always break down on the definitions. "Murder" is an excellent example.

I am not proposing a "monkey's paw" trick scenario... you can define it as narrowly as you want.

And this isn't a case of "if everyone did it then it would be terrible".... I am just asking YOU to be 'Thanos'.

My preferred group would be "people who are morally unrecoverable and unable to function in society without harming people".

 

[Shadowy Man]

My preferred group would be "people who are morally unrecoverable and unable to function in society without harming people".

That may lead to a lot of special elections needed to fill the empty Congressional seats.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The simplest philosophical propositions always break down on the definitions. "Murder" is an excellent example.

I am not proposing a "monkey's paw" trick scenario... you can define it as narrowly as you want.

And this isn't a case of "if everyone did it then it would be terrible".... I am just asking YOU to be 'Thanos'.

My preferred group would be "people who are morally unrecoverable and unable to function in society without harming people".

That would likely not be a good idea to target. The problem is that you're going to knock out so many pieces of the systems that keep society working. Too many chains of authority will be beheaded and things won't get done. There are many, many things better done by a scumbag than with nobody at the helm.

(And the movie got it wrong. Thanos would have taken out civilization and with it the vast majority of beings living in civilizations.) We could function with an orderly loss of half the population, but his snap leaves half the population to run all of our infrastructure. Things would crash before we could reallocate people to the half of the system we would be keeping.)

 

[Jarhyn]

The simplest philosophical propositions always break down on the definitions. "Murder" is an excellent example.

I am not proposing a "monkey's paw" trick scenario... you can define it as narrowly as you want.

And this isn't a case of "if everyone did it then it would be terrible".... I am just asking YOU to be 'Thanos'.

My preferred group would be "people who are morally unrecoverable and unable to function in society without harming people".

That would likely not be a good idea to target. The problem is that you're going to knock out so many pieces of the systems that keep society working. Too many chains of authority will be beheaded and things won't get done. There are many, many things better done by a scumbag than with nobody at the helm.

(And the movie got it wrong. Thanos would have taken out civilization and with it the vast majority of beings living in civilizations.) We could function with an orderly loss of half the population, but his snap leaves half the population to run all of our infrastructure. Things would crash before we could reallocate people to the half of the system we would be keeping.)

Pretty much.

Honestly, this is the reason pandemics are so horrific: past a certain threshold, and a loss of some portion of the population would be catastrophic.

Combine that with the fact that intractible assholes tend to seek positions of power, and you would see an outsized hole in many administrative positions as you say... Either that or very few people would actually disappear because intractibility is a continuum with very few people at that extreme end.

Either way, I think such a button ought never actually be pressed even, in reality, against those who would press it; far better to just not, and work to accomplish our goals in the world for good social function and acceptance of compatibility by the work of our own hands than by magic buttons.

 

[Bronzeage]

The simplest philosophical propositions always break down on the definitions. "Murder" is an excellent example.

I am not proposing a "monkey's paw" trick scenario... you can define it as narrowly as you want.

And this isn't a case of "if everyone did it then it would be terrible".... I am just asking YOU to be 'Thanos'.

My preferred group would be "people who are morally unrecoverable and unable to function in society without harming people".

It is a "Monkey's Paw" scenario. You gain a benefit with little effort on your part, in exchange for a loss to someone else.

Someone playing Thanos may find it morally unrecoverable that someone would propose erasing so many people from existence for undefined reasons.

 

[AdamWho]

The simplest philosophical propositions always break down on the definitions. "Murder" is an excellent example.

I am not proposing a "monkey's paw" trick scenario... you can define it as narrowly as you want.

And this isn't a case of "if everyone did it then it would be terrible".... I am just asking YOU to be 'Thanos'.

My preferred group would be "people who are morally unrecoverable and unable to function in society without harming people".

That would likely not be a good idea to target. The problem is that you're going to knock out so many pieces of the systems that keep society working. Too many chains of authority will be beheaded and things won't get done. There are many, many things better done by a scumbag than with nobody at the helm.

(And the movie got it wrong. Thanos would have taken out civilization and with it the vast majority of beings living in civilizations.) We could function with an orderly loss of half the population, but his snap leaves half the population to run all of our infrastructure. Things would crash before we could reallocate people to the half of the system we would be keeping.)

I am asking what YOU would do. My examples are irrelevant.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I think God tried it as a reset on humanity -- drowning all the wicked folks plus their kids, babies, and unborn. And if he effed up...

 

[TomC]

I am asking what YOU would do. My examples are irrelevant.

If I said, "I'd push the button on people who think they know who is

My preferred group would be "people who are morally unrecoverable and unable to function in society without harming people".

Would you understand why I would do that? Why you and people like you would be first against the wall, if I were Absolute Ruler of Everything?
Tom

 

[AdamWho]

I am asking what YOU would do. My examples are irrelevant.

If I said, "I'd push the button on people who think they know who is

My preferred group would be "people who are morally unrecoverable and unable to function in society without harming people".

Would you understand why I would do that? Why you and people like you would be first against the wall, if I were Absolute Ruler of Everything?
Tom

I completely understand the irony that I might likely disappear by the moral criteria I invented.